Good news: it's a pretty decent weekend for new TV shows and movies on streaming services. While TV networks and streamers are figuring out ways to start filming your favorite shows again (The Witcher season 2 restarts filming next week!) streaming services like Netflix, HBO Max and Apple TV Plus still have regular releases of TV series and movies to look forward to.
Below, then, is our collection of highlights from the weekend in streaming services. If you want one recommendations of a show to check out over the coming few days, our pick is HBO's Lovecraft Country, which counts Jordan Peele and JJ Abrams among its executive producers, and is based on well-regarded source material.
For that and the rest of this weekend's highlights in streaming, keep reading.
Lovecraft Country (HBO/Sky)
The long-awaited HBO adaptation of Matt Ruff's novel is drawing rave reviews for the way it explores racism in Jim Crow-era America, while also blending in a big helping of cosmic horror imagery. Atticus Freeman (Jonathan Majors) is looking for his father (Michael Kenneth Williams), and leaves Chicago to take a road trip across the US with friend Letitia (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) and uncle (Courtney B Vance) in order to track his dad down.
This journey soon confronts the travellers with horror in different forms: the real-world racist attitudes of white America during the '50s, and those fictional entities associated with HP Lovecraft's writing (so, y'know, tentacles and stuff).
Lovecraft Country debuts this Sunday August 16 on HBO in the US, and you can stream it on HBO Max. In the UK, you can watch it starting August 17 on Sky Atlantic and Now TV.
Streaming on HBO from August 16
Ted Lasso (Apple TV Plus)
Jason Sudeikis plays an American football coach who takes on the role of managing an English football (or soccer) club, to mixed effect. The Ted Lasso character was created to sell soccer to NBC viewers in the US – you might remember him from a fictional Tottenham Hotspur-themed viral video from a few years back. Whether it'll work as a full series will remain to be seen, but Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence is behind the show.
Hopefully it'll be another solid series in a quietly busy year for Apple TV Plus.
Streaming on Apple TV Plus from August 14
Project Power (Netflix)
Netflix's vault of original movies is evidently never going to run out of stuff for us to watch. This latest film is about a pill that gives each taker a specific superpower, for better or worse. That same pill soon leads to a spike in crime, and a former soldier (Jamie Foxx), er, cop (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and a teenager (Dominique Fishback) team up to take down the company responsible for this narcotic. Project Power is set in New Orleans.
It's been a mixed few months for Netflix's original movies, which continue to only occasionally feel like actual movies you'd pay to see in the cinema (Da 5 Bloods, for example, or maybe Extraction with Chris Hemsworth). Still, we can't deny that having new films to watch right now feels like a treat, at least until theaters reopen with the coming of Tenet.
Streaming on Netflix from August 14
Mapleworth Murders (Quibi)
Look, we're not watching Quibi right now, since it's a mobile-focused streaming service and we haven't really left our homes for five months. That said, like last week's The Fugitive reboot, Mapleworth looks like it's worth checking out for subscribers of the short-form video platform. Featuring a whole bunch of 30 Rock and SNL alumni, Mapleworth is a murder mystery sitcom that releases every Monday, and stars long-time SNL writer Paula Pell as a detective. Might be a good excuse to use up your free Quibi trial.
Now streaming on Quibi
Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge – Adventure Awaits (Disney Plus)
You won't find anyone on the TechRadar team who's comfortable going to a theme park right now (despite a whole bunch of them being open), but this special brings a little bit of the Disney attraction to your living room. It absolutely looks a 90-minute video of marketing fluff, but if Disneyland is a place that feels years away to you right now, you might enjoy seeing this enormous Star Wars-themed area explained by a variety of celebrities.
Strangely, this one isn't available on Disney Plus in the UK, but it was added over the past weekend in the US.
Now streaming on Disney Plus
- Best TV shows of 2020 so far
- The Umbrella Academy season 3: When we're expecting it
